Similar to yesterday, I woke up this morning with no clear agenda. I did, however, get woken up by a phone call from my friend Ghania. He was asking me if we were going to go to this Egyptian gathering in San Jose to watch the finals of the Africa Nations Cup. I was very hesitant to go but ended up going anyways. We rented a car and Omar Shaker, Omar Fahmy, myself, Ghania, and Ghania's friend Mostafa joined.
The reason I was hesitant to go is because I had a strong feeling that this trip had very little ROI. I am not a huge soccer follower so I don't really care about following the game. I also don't have strong ties with most of the people I was going to run into at the gathering, so I really had no good reason to go. Was my hunch right? Yes and no. I did run into a few people whom I haven't seen in a while and wanted to see, but I still feel like I could have utilized those seven hours better.
When we came back I did some work on my "enchanted forest" art project. I was cleaning up some of the vectors so I can go to NoiseBridge tomorrow and cut out the pieces. I invited my coworkers on Wednesday for an evening of painting. Or, as I would prefer to say, a "psychedelic painting ceremony."
As the evening came along though, I started descending into a state of mind that I very frequently descend into these days. That is, the state of feeling lost. I openly acknowledge that I don't know what I am doing with my life. I am lacking clarity in terms of how I want it to pan out. And, while I feel deeply gratified by the options I have as far as where I can live and work, my life is lacking on some basic fundamentals. Those many many options in life that I have, coupled with the confusion of not knowing what I want, is putting me in a state of paralysis.
As I am writing this, I am making it extremely clear to myself that this state of paralysis must end. I need to establish a clear vision for myself, and that to me is currently my top priority.
On another note, today I officially kicked off an experiment to study to what degree San Francisco is Islamophobic. I'll be posting a more detailed update on that some time this month.
It's almost 2am and I feel exhausted. But, today has been a good day. I woke up around 6.30am, did a condensed strength workout and went swimming for the first time in many weeks. I later ended up going to a biology lab in Oakland called Counter Culture. Counter Culture is a DIY lab just like Genspace in Brooklyn, but it's more spacious. Patrik, our guide to the lab, spent 90 minutes walking us through the different equipment available there. The vast majority of the equipment and tools he was referring were very unknown to me of course, but it was interesting to see the breadth of projects one can do at that space. Here's a little sneak peak into the lab. It's very scrappy.
Later in the afternoon I was supposed to go with Maysa to a Sufi night, which I really wanted to go to. I unfortunately missed my train and couldn't make it. Instead I joined Omar, my roommate, and Omar Fahmy to this grand opening party of some community space. Later we went to Ragia's house for her farewell party, then we went to a park near Lake Merrit for some fire spinning. It was a beautiful night and I danced my heart out. I didn't spin fire myself but I instead played around with LED poi as well as my LED gloves - some good progress!
Here are a few videos I took earlier in the night:
Today was a really fun day. One thing I can do better is to have clear goals for what I want to accomplish in a given day. I woke up today with no agenda at all. Not that I don't want to leave room for serendipity, but I also want to make sure I'm using my time wisely.
I went to the Techshop this morning to attend a class on Carbon Fiber. I didn't in particular have an interest in materials, but this class is part of the casual purposeless exploration I like to do.
Jon, our instructor, gave us a rundown of carbon fiber layup and carbon fiber fabrication. I won't actually into any details, but the key take aways for me were 1) carbon fiber is a very strong and light-weight material, 2) 10% of the components manufactured by/for SpaceX are carbon fiber, and 3) I have no further interest in pursuing this.
Here's a quick video of the piece of carbon fiber I ended up making under Jon's instruction:
This is the first public post I do in 2017 on this blog. What a shame! I'll try to be more open and do a better job of documenting my life moving forward.
It has been raining pretty hard in the Bay Area the last few days, and last night was no exception. Staying at home was the most comforting choice. Omar Fahmy, a friend of ours, was visiting and the two of us ended up painting through the night. The painting is part of a big art piece I've been prepping for some time, and we're finally starting to make good progress!
Here's Omar painting away and unleashing his artistic skills!
We are painting the forest with psychedelic colors, and for paint we're using florescent acrylic paint. I'll be installing blacklight around the final piece from some extra trippy-ness! Here's a little sneak peak of how things are looking under black light:
And I just hung those up on one of the walls of our room. We'll slowly work our way to cover that entire frame with the forest.
More important than the art piece though is Omar telling me last night about how happy and present he felt as we were both painting. He hasn't held a brush since kindergarten, nor did he think he ever would. Omar's testament echoed feelings I have had for a long time, both in a small way and a big way.
In a small way, I too felt very content and present as I was painting. It was a very soothing social bonding, and I felt like I could keep painting forever in that serene ambience we had set up for ourselves. But, in a bigger way, I felt the need to have more experiences like this; social experiences where we do something memorable and create things as opposed to just spending time "hanging out" and doing nothing.
Yes, I need more memorable social experiences in my life, and I'll work on creating those for myself and for people around me moving forward.
I just arrived to San Francisco from Costa Rica about an hour ago. This concludes a 19-day trip that started out with a one-way ticket to Boston. I learned a lot about myself on this trip, and I'll be spending more time to flesh out these learnings in future posts. Given that it's a late hour and I have work tomorrow, I'll keep it brief.
Learning is one of my main joys in life. I absolutely loved the biohacking class that I took in NYC. It was a domain that I was completely unfamiliar with, yet very interested in. I now feel not just more knowledgeable, but more inspired to do things I never thought I could be able to do. I plan to find a biology lab nearby to redo some of the experiments I learned and expand on that.
I love dynamic and unpredictable environments. When I bought my one-way ticket to Boston, I did not have clear plans of what I wanted to get out of the trip. I knew I wanted to meet some people at Harvard Arab Weekend and wanted to spend some time in NYC, but that was really it. I ended up meeting beautiful and inspiring people, learning biohacking, and going on an unexpected trip to Costa Rica. Who knew?! Routine, I am realizing, is death to me, and I need to keep things moving for me. Not necessarily that I should be moving around all the time, but trying new things and picking up projects that engage me.
I hate tourist towns. At least when I am traveling alone, I hate spending time in tourist towns. I had to go to a little tourist town called Manuel Antonio to run away from the hurricane. While the nature there is beautiful, I didn't enjoy my time there too much. Tourist towns are all starting to look very similar to me. Manuel Antonio looks similar to Coron in the Philippines and to some extent Montañita in Ecuador. They all lack substance, and substance is what I look for. Having said that, with friends it can be a fun place for a couple of days. On the other hand, I immensely enjoyed stumbling on what turned out to be a modest church/warehouse, singing and chatting with local people - that was substance!
Spontaneity is fun, but having a rough plan is better for short trips. Unlike my trip to spontaneous trip to Ecuador, my trip to Costa Rica was both a spontaneous and a short trip. While I did have a great time, I could have had a more heightened experience if I had planned it out in advance. For example, I would have loved to do an ayahuasca ceremony while I was there, but I couldn't because I needed to be on a special diet for a week prior to the ceremony. Also, there was a lot of "sunk time" while I was there researching and figuring out what to do. On longer trips though, this isn't as important.
That's all I have for tonight. I'll end this post with a selfie I took while I visiting Poás Volcano on Saturday. I rarely take selfies, and I am generally not a big fan, but there you have it!
Last night I ended up going to see a movie at Arab Cinema Week. This is the third movie that I see in theaters within a span of a week - an all-time high. I don't particularly watch that many movies, and over the past few years I'd go to a movie theater around once a year. Since I met Dania last weekend that seemed to have changed quite a bit 😀
I particularly went to the theater last night to meet up with Peri, whom I met at Harvard Arab Weekend in Boston and is the organizer of the event. We watched a movie called نوّارة, an Egyptian movie by منّة شلبي. The movie was about inequality in Egypt, the lives of the rich compared to the poor, and how the revolution hasn't really been helping the people of the lower class.
مشاهدتي لفيلم نوّارة أصابتني بالاكتئاب. جسَّد الفيلم الفارق الرهيب بين الطبقة الغنية و الطبقة الفقيرة في المجتمع المصري، و كان - للأسف - تجسيدا واقعيا التمسته مرارا في حياتي في مصر. بِتُّ أفكّر في حياتي و الفرص التي أتيحت لي من تعليمٍ و سفرٍ و عملٍ. لو لم أكن وُلدْتُّ لمن وُلدْتُّ لما أتيحت لي تلك الفرص. أنا ببساطة إنسان محظوظ، و من السفاهة أن أظن غير ذلك.
مشاهدتي لأفلام عدّة هذا الأسبوع جعلتني أدرك هشاشة مشاعري. أجد نفسي أنازع دموعي حينما أرى الظلم و الفقر و عدم المساواة في الوطن العربي. أتمنى في المستقبل القريب أن أوظّف تلك المشاعر في عمل يغيّر هذا الواقع - و لو بقدر بسيط.
أنا الآن في مطار لاجوارديا في نيويورك و على وشك ركوب طائرة إلى أركانساس (المحطة الأولى في طريقي إلى كوستا ريكا). إلى اللقاء!
When I woke up this morning I had no plans for Thanksgiving weekend, but now I do! I will be heading to Costa Rica in about 12 hours. I know next to nothing about the country and have no idea what I'll be doing there, but it should be a fun weekend adventure 🙂
My current trip to Boston, NYC, and now Costa Rica is probably the most spontaneous and unplanned trip I have done to date, and it's now serving me as a proof and reminder of how spontaneity can open doors for a lot of serendipity to happen - from the people I met here in NYC, to the biohacking class, and to the friends I made at Harvard Arab Weekend. I feel like my life has become tangibly richer and more lively.
In theory, I am excited about going to Costa Rica. In reality though, I have mixed feelings. Over the past few days I met people in NYC whom I absolutely loved, and it's making me wish I could stay here longer.
Back in 2013 I made a promise to myself that I'll never let distances be barriers to people I love. Honoring that promise, I'll be back in NYC again soon and often.
Last weekend I headed off to Woodward Reservoir to join the Symbiosis Gathering. Symbiosis is the second gathering of its kind that I go to, and it’s hard for me to describe what it is. I like to think of it as a giant art project, a lifestyle festival, or maybe a playground for adults. It’s a playground where people come to listen to great music, enjoy gorgeous art projects, practice yoga, meditate, and possibly explore themselves with nudity and/or drugs. All by a beautiful and serene lake in Northern California.
But, I am not writing this to talk about any of that.
For me, my experience at Symbiosis was more of an educational one. In addition to the packed festivities, I attended a number of workshops that I found insightful, interesting, creative, or outlandish. I wanted to briefly share some of these experiences here.
Biohacking:
Biohacking is a field that I had been completely oblivious to. I was not aware that there are kits out there you can buy with chips that you can implant in your body to give you, let’s say, “super powers”. A kit presented to us at the workshop is made and sold by dangerousthings.com. It’s an RFID chip that, once implanted in your hand, can be used to replace your home and car keys entirely. It effectively turns your hand into a fob. Of course, it’s not approved by any agency and is to be used completely at your own risk. Despite that, one person in the workshop volunteered to have one implanted.
The Digestive System & the Topless Model
In this workshop we learned about the digestive system, but in a rather outlandish way. The workshop was “taught” by a physician, an artist, and a topless model. The artist started painting the digestive system on the model while the physician was explaining how the digestive system works.
For us, students, we were all given sketchpads and charcoal. After the physician gave her briefing, the artist gave us tips on how to draw and sketch nude models, along with how to draw the digestive system on top of that.
To my slight surprise, I felt like the presence of a topless model wasn’t at all erotic, but having her as a catalyst to draw the digestive system was interesting and, admittedly, effective.
Smoothie + Dry Ice = Ice Cream
I unfortunately missed the first part of this cooking workshop, but one thing I learned is that you can use dry ice in food! The chef made a vegetable smoothie and mixed it with dry ice to create some delicious ice cream. Because of the dry ice the ice cream tasted a little carbonated at first, but if you let it sit out for a few minutes that carbonation goes away. I want to try this with smoothies I make one day.
The dry ice and the smoothie were together mixed in a blender. Small quantities of dry ice are added a time. Here's a little snippet of what that process looks like. You can see the fumes of the dry ice flowing out of the blender.
How Arachnids Have Sex
Another workshop was given by a biologist specializing in arachnids. She had discovered a few new species herself in her travels in the tropicals. Fast facts about things I learned in this session:
There are 100,000 known species of arachnids, and it's estimated that 90% of arachnid species remain undiscovered.
Scorpions give birth while spiders lay eggs. In fact, female scorpions do make eggs, but they hatch inside the female then the female gives birth to it.
In some species of spiders, the female kills and eats the male after mating.
In some species of spiders, the male mutilates the female’s genitalia to prevent other males from mating with the same female. Ouch!
Some spider males have feathers like peacocks, and they use it to attract females.
Spiders are musical, and some spider males play a “symphony” to a female that can range from 30 minutes to 6 hours to attract the female for mating. Here's a quick video that shows how this can look and sound like:
These were all a small fraction of the workshops that I attended. Other workshops I attended were about hacking the financial system, how to make sauerkraut and pickles, feeling euphoric with a cacao ceremony, exploring your senses with sensory speed dating, popping and waving, and more!
There was so much to explore that weekend, and it made me realize more and more how I enjoy learning, especially when bundled with a creative and outlandish environment like Symbiosis. More to come.
Oh, and this doesn't count as a workshop, but I'll throw it here anyways. I am constantly accused by people that know me that I am way too serious, so here's me and friends at Symbiosis making clowns of ourselves!
I realized I didn't give a full update on my fast, so here it is!
During Ramadan I decided to be a vegetarian. I have been thinking about being a vegetarian for a long time for both sustainability and humanitarian reasons, and I found Ramadan to be a good occasion for that. In fact, Ramadan has somewhat evolved for me into a month where I explore various diets and various ways of restraining myself from food.
In the last week of Ramadan, I decided to try another experiment. Rather than just be vegetarian, I decided to live fully off of a food supplement that I bought from 100% Food. I like to call it "Space Food".
I bought a huge packet that has the nutritional value of 21 meals (3 meals/day for 7 days) and I would add almond milk or water to mix it and drink it whenever I was hungry. Under no circumstances do I consume anything else.
Here's a picture of the packet. It weighs around 3.25kg. This version is the "double protein" version, which has twice as much protein as the normal recommended diet. They sent the chocolate-flavored version even though I ordered the no-flavored one, but that wasn't a big deal.
By far I would say this has been the most interesting diet experiment I have tried thus far. I would describe how I felt during that week in phases:
1. The Confusion Phase
For the first couple of days my brain was confused. I would drink the space food, but my brain didn't process the fact that I was full. I would still feel hungry despite drinking significant quantities of space food. I would try to drink more and I couldn't because my stomach was completely full. These were definitely the hardest two days, but afterwards I had adapted and I could better tell when I was actually hungry.
2. The Deprivation Phase
For the next two days, while my brain has finally started processing and understanding my new food intake, I still felt deprived of the joys of eating. Smelling the delicious food while I am walking by restaurants or passing by the cafeteria at work and knowing that I won't be able to have any of that for days was a somewhat difficult feeling to process, but then came the next phase.
3. The Adaptive Phase
By day 5, I felt like I had completely adapted to this lifestyle. Space food was just "the norm". And, despite being attracted to the smells of the deliciously looking food all around me, I just got accustomed to the fact that it wasn't for me.
As strange as it may sound, but I felt this feeling of freedom and liberty. I was no longer attached to eating as I was, and I just no longer had to think about it. I did a short trip that week to Santa Cruz and guess what food I packed with me for the trip? Yep, just a large bottle of space food and that was all I had to do. I felt a very strong will against eating anything (including desserts, which have always been a weak spot for me).
What kept me going throughout that entire week was that my energy levels that week were better than they had ever been. I had extremely stable energy levels with no low points throughout the day at all, where in comparison to normal food I experience low points where I feel tired in the middle of the day on a semi-regular basis.
So did I give up food entirely? Absolutely not - chewing remains one of my hobbies 🙂 I do, however, replace a regular meal with space food often if I am short on time or just don't want to spend time preparing food. Also, my willpower against food has remained and I find myself a lot stronger in resisting temptations of food that I don't find particularly healthy.
It's now been a little over 50 hours since beginning my fast. Needless to say, I am definitely missing food, especially smelling the great food that Omar cooked today and the eggplant parmesan that Jennifer and Kate had yesterday after our yoga class.
I am, however, feeling different. My energy level seems very stable. I haven't experienced yet the ups and downs in energy levels that come with eating food, and I like that. A few more days to go. Hopefully the fasting gets easier moving forward.
